In general, transmissive liquid crystal display devices usually include a liquid crystal panel, a backlight unit, a circuit substrate or a power supply for supplying various types of electrical signals to the liquid crystal panel, a case for housing these, and the like.
The liquid crystal panel has a display region (active area) in which a plurality of pixels are arrayed, and a frame region (non-active area) outside the display region. The display region includes pixel electrodes, TFTs (thin film transistors), and the like, and displays images or video. Meanwhile, the frame region has a sealing member for sealing liquid crystal material between substrates, wiring or a monolithically-formed driver circuit connected to scan lines or signal lines, terminals that connect to an external driver circuit, and the like. The frame region is not used for image or video display.
The frame region of the liquid crystal panel does not contribute to display, and it is therefore preferable that the frame region be made narrow. Yet, while the frame region of liquid crystal panels has been progressively narrowed over the years, completely eliminating the frame region is difficult in principle.
Conventional research has focused on narrowing or obscuring the frame region on the display panel. The subject applicants have disclosed in Patent Document 1 a display device in which a transmissive cover is disposed on the viewer side of the display panel. In this display device, the edge of the transmissive cover has a convex curved portion that function as a lens.
The convex curved portion (lens portion) of the transmissive cover is typically disposed so as to cover the frame region of the display panel and a part of the display region near the frame region (hereinafter, also referred to as the “peripheral display region”). The light emitted from the pixels (peripheral pixels) in the peripheral display region refract at the lens portion. This results in the image formed by the peripheral pixels being magnified and displayed on the front side of the frame region. Because of this effect, the frame region becomes obscured or appears as if the frame region does not exist.
By using the display device described above, it becomes possible to provide a portable electronic device (smartphone or the like) in which almost the entire panel surface on the viewer side of the electronic device is capable of display, for example. This type of electronic device has a large area capable of content display relative to its size, and is thus advantageous in terms of making the device more compact.